You are the one who said that we were doing a few trials and then we would develop a protocol.

I'm not backing down from anything. You want to do a test, let's do a test. But doing one trial proves absolutely nothing- whether you get them all right, or none of them right. You've been doing this for so long and haven't yet realised that? No wonder you have so many problems when you deal with skeptics.

If you want to draw any ACTUAL conclusions I'm game. But let's do it right. I'm not going to do some piecemeal thing where we have no real idea of what the results mean.

You wanted me to send 4 words to derrida and ninja. I would then post the words in random order to you with numbers. You would then do your thing and try and guess the original order.

You now seem to have gone back to some guess 1 word out of 4 thing.

Why do you try to be as difficult as possible in these discussions? Why does it take four posts to get you to answer simple questions? Why do you keep switching things around? Why do you keep trying to shut down the discussion? A cynical person might guess that you are deliberately trying to sabotage these discussions in order that you can go off and moan about how yet another skeptic refused to test you. Or the cynic may guess that you are trying to keep things as confusing as possible to try and manipulate the results to your favour. Now, I'm not a cynic, I'm a skeptic, so I would just ask why someone who has come to a site looking for help in demonstrating a skill he claims to have would not bend over backwards to try and make the process as clear and straightforward as possible, and look for ways to actually confirm what he can do in a reliable way?

G. Adam, with all due respect you are going at this all wrong - at least from the perspective of trying to figure out if something real is going on. The only real way we can draw conclusions is over many trials - not one or two. If you want to just try one or two to see how it works in practice, that's fine, but we can't draw conclusions from it.

Also, the stats here aren't that simple - at least not to me. For example: you are allowing yourself to double up words. If you were to double up two words I would think that would greatly alter you odds (favourably) of getting two right. Doubling up words changes the stats in ways that I don't fully understand - the thing is, I don't get the sense you fully understand it either? What happens if you triple up one word? then you have huge odds of getting one word right, and 25% chance of getting the other one right.What does this do to the overall odds? I don't know. But again, I don't think you do either, or how these multiple guesses should be scored, or combined.

I know these are just informal tests, and we're not doing parapsychology here, but there are enough stat freaks hanging around the skeptical forums that it really doesn't make sense to do this without at least casual involvement from one. Otherwise what possible good could this do other than as a mildly interesting time passer?

I also don't think you have any clear idea of exactly what would be required to achieve statistical significance here. If you don't double up words and guess randomly, what are the odds of getting 1 or 2 hits? Or 3? I don't think you know. Or at least, you haven't demonstrated that you know.

I am actually trying to help you here. This seems to be something you have obsessed over for a long time. Part of the problem may be the haphazard manner that you go about this. For someone who has done 20,000 trials, you seem to be going about this in a rather unfocussed manner.

You didn't respond to any of the points I raised. Are you saying it makes no difference if you double up words?

Again, Mr. I-did-two-stat-courses, set out the complete protocol, including how many trials you think are necessary to get a good confidence level, how the scores are to be tabulated, etc. and I'll get someone to look it over. I'm not saying that you don't know the stats, I've said that you haven't shown that you know the stats. The fact that you think two trials can ever mean anything significant is concerning to me about your stat knowledge. Stats are hard stuff, you've got PHD scientists who completely bungle stats in their experiments. I am not pretending to be competent in stats either.

So, if you just want to do a couple trials so you can get a feel for how it works, then fine. But we're not going to draw conclusions from it. I'll pick four words (to keep it simple we'll liimit it to nouns) and PM them to derrida and Ninja, then send you the numbers with the four words in random order.

If you want to do something more meaningful I'm up for that. I'm even up for doing some legwork to verify, but I'm not going to try and come up with a protocol myself.

1. 185/2 ((in astronomy" he said)) THESIS2. 52/11 ((land and sell it to us immediately. He might have well allowed a note)) FACILITY3. 186/13 ((guarding the paper, dust and memories of a time long past)) MOTORWAY4. 157/8 ((him from accepting totally the natural order of things but gave him)) RATTLE